Hello everyone, I just wanted to signal the in Italy there'll be a HackDay dedicated to libraries, in Milan, on June 26th. Hackers will be computer science students from the local University, and there will be a prize.

I will participate both as Wikimedia and as MLOL (the digital library system I work for), but I wanted to propose a challenge for the day for the hackers to tackle.

My idea is fairly simple: improve our (already amazing) EPUB generator. [1]

In Italy we use it a lot (look at the stats [2]) but often our books are not valid EPUBs, and my idea is that if we manage to generate validate EPUBs all the time, that would be very useful for everyone. For example, at MLOL we have a brand-new app that reads EPUB on mobile. We have more than 3000 Wikisource books directly indexed in MLOL, so the user just needs a click for importing the EPUB in the app (it will be generated on the fly, if we do not produce cache files [4]).

An amazing thing is that the app, for example, has a feature for people whohave low vision or are dyslexic.

In the end, the challenge I want to propose is to solve some issues [4] of the tool, and make the EPUBs valid.

Do you have other issues? Another proposed challenge? Preferred issues?

If you help me, this is free software development for all Wikisources :-D

Aubrey

[1] http://wsexport.wmflabs.org/tool/book.php [2] http://wsexport.wmflabs.org/tool/stat.php [3] https://github.com/wsexport/tool [4] https://github.com/wsexport/tool/issues/38